


The Ends Justifies the Means (Or So the Saying Goes)

by AngeNoir



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-10 21:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers wakes up and finds the world around him needs saving again. Director of SHIELD, Norman Osborn, is walking the line between human and superhuman, and Steve finds himself dragged into a battle where the enemy is public sentiment, and his best hope is an agent buried deep within SHIELD.</p><p>Part of the Cap-Iron Man Reverse Big Bang of 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is only the first chapter. I'm so sorry. I had hoped to be completely done by today and I'm not. I hope for this to be done by the weekend, though!
> 
> Also, when I have the link to the art, I'll post that up here. As of right now, I don't know where the permanent link to the art is located.

 

Steve opened his eyes.

That in itself was something strange, something… off-putting. He wasn’t supposed to be able to open his eyes. That was it, he was done and out, he was over with. There shouldn’t be any reason to open his eyes.

And yet he opened his eyes.

The ceiling above him looked plain. So did the walls, when he let his eyes drift to one side. He wasn’t going to move, not yet – not until he knew where he was and who was responsible for his condition. Who had found him when the plane went down? He hadn’t thought anyone was nearby, that anyone would come for him.

His senses came back online slowly, touch and sight the first, and then smell – and the room smelled faintly of metal, of ozone. He carefully fought to keep from wrinkling his nose; the air seemed stale, flat. Empty, and impersonal. But it didn’t smell the way a hospital normally smelled, which was interesting.

Sound came last, slowly and brokenly. Sometimes he thought he could catch words around him, but they were all muffled, and there was no one in the room with him. There was a radio near the bed, dial low, but it was difficult to try and ignore the other noises (what _was_ that humming noise, all those beeps, that whooshing beat?) and focus on it. It took him some time – no more than a couple of minutes – before he managed to get a hold of his senses and control them.

The radio was relating – a baseball game. As if the baseball game was happening right now, the commentator describing a pitch and a hit, and Steve could see the players in his mind – because _he had been present at that game_.

Whoever would put that on there didn’t know him. That moved him from indecisive about the friendliness of whoever found him to firmly believing he was not in friendly territory.

He sat up, aware that he was in loose-fitting pants of an odd material and an undershirt with a stylized eagle on it. Upright, he swept the room critically, looking at the sparse desk and chair, the window that was open to let in fresh air ( _false, false, there was no fresh air in this room_ ), the narrow bed he’d been on, and a doorway.

Even as he oriented on the doorway, it opened, revealing a narrow hall and a young woman dressed professionally. Even then, though – she was wrong. _It_ was wrong. Yes, she wore a navy blouse over a white skirt that reached her calves, and she wore socks instead of stocking, and her hair was neatly pinned underneath the cap, but – she looked uncomfortable. Not in the face; no, she had a smile on her face, a gentle look of confusion. No, her tension was in her shoulders, in the way that her arms were behind at her side but twitched as if they wanted to go behind her back; as if she was a soldier. There wasn’t any tension in her voice, though – her voice was clear, and strong, when she said, “Good morning. Or, should I say, afternoon.”

Something was very, very wrong.

“Where am I?” he asked, keeping his voice level.

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.” Her voice was calm, easy, but it sounded… wrong, somehow. It was English, no mistake, but it was a vastly different accent he was used to hearing. Sped up in some places, slowed down in others, and awkward. _Different_.

Narrowing his eyes, trying to keep his posture relaxed even as he readied himself to fight, he repeated, “Where am I, really?”

Now the smile was dripping away, even as she kept her face open. Her shoulders, though – her shoulders and legs tensed. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she replied, tilting her head a bit to the side.

“The game,” he said, slowly, feeling out his words. “It’s from May, 1941. I know, ‘cause I was there.” Taking a deep breath in, setting his shoulders to be as intimidating as possible, he stood up and said clearly, “Now, I’m gonna ask you again. Where am I?”

Movement came from outside, movement that coincided with the muscles in one of her hands tensing. A signal, made behind her back, or a code word she had said. Something. Even still, she kept her mildly confused face easily. “Captain Rogers?” she repeated, and that she knew his name, knew enough about him to try and simulate ‘New York City circa 1941,’ terrified him enough that he took a threatening step forward, shoulders squared.

“ _Who are you_?” he demanded, and two men burst into the room.

That was enough for him; he knocked the first one to the side, mildly pleased to see that his speed, strength, and reflexes were as good as ever. The second one brought up a futuristic-looking gun, and the first one was up and moving at him again, so Steve barreled forward, shoulder hitting into the two of them and slamming them through the wall.

The very thin wall.

And outside of that wall was _nothing_ like what was inside.

The sick feeling bloomed into a deep feeling of terror. He didn’t know who was holding him captive, what their intention was – hell, they might have already done all number of experiments. Instead he ran in the direction with the least opposition, straining his ears until he could hear faint sounds, sounds of people walking and talking, and he made his way blindly down a hallway, to a place of glass and sleek lines, people dressed in strange clothes with strange gadgets who stared at him in shock.

He found himself outside, bright lights and bright sounds and flashing signs all around him, strange clothes and accents and sleek machines that prowled the streets and a giant flying man in the sky.

“At ease, soldier!”

Steve whipped around to see a man in a suit standing in the middle of the street, just as black beasts – cars? – encircled them like wolves surrounding a deer, men pouring out of the doors to stand at attention. Steve caught sight of every weapon, even the few that were hidden, before snapping his attention back to the man standing before him. Close cut hair, shark eyes and a salesman’s smile, tall and broad shouldered with a stark green tie against the white shirt, framed by charcoal grey lapels. Steve narrowed his eyes at the man, not relaxing, but the way the other men responded to him certainly implied this man was a commander of some sort.

“My name is Colonel Norman Osborn, Captain Steve Rogers. And may I just say that, for a man who’s been frozen for ninety years, you certainly are spry.”

Around him, the sounds became muted, dream-like. Distantly, he heard himself repeat weakly, “Ninety years?”

“Give or take a couple of months,” the man – Osborn – nodded decisively, and then stepped forward as the men around them began clearing the, the sidewalks and streets of people who were gawking at the too-tall blond American dressed in a t-shirt and loose trousers and nothing else. “You going to be okay?” Osborn pressed, reaching out and putting a hand on Steve’s shoulder, as if that somehow would make it okay. As if Steve hadn’t just woken up a whole generation after his crash in the ocean.

As if Steve was going to be anywhere close to okay.

Swallowing hard, Steve glanced around at too-much color and too-many people. “Yeah,” he managed to choke out. “Yeah, I…” Breathing in deep, he tried to say as casually as possible, “I had a date.”

 

* * *

 

Steve had to admit, he didn’t much like the future. For one, there were no flying cars (though there were flying robots; that was a check in his book, if they had been nice friendly robots and not Sentinels) and for another, people still killed one another, still starved to death, still froze overnight, still hated and were petty and were vicious-minded.

But he also had to admit that the conveniences of the future were pretty swell. There was hot water that stayed hot even if he took a shower for two hours, for example, or microwaves and instant food, waiting to be heated up – oh, and the internet, that wealth and breadth of knowledge available at his fingertips. There were good things, too – more sights and sounds, more tastes, less clutter. Less time, too; that was probably a check in the con category, though.

He was given a small apartment, but spent most of his time in SHIELD HQ or on the SHIELD helicarrier. Director Osborn had managed to get him transferred to SHIELD so that the Army had no more hold on him, which meant that the SHIELD psychology division had a field day. The scientists, too – poked and prodded and generally acted the closest things to vampires a human could get, with how much they seemed to enjoy draining Steve dry.

From the limited conversations he had – limited because it seemed like everyone around him was either too low-clearance to actually speak to Captain America, or too awe-struck to do so even when they had the clearance – scientists the world over had attempted to recreate the super-soldier serum, to no effect. There were plenty of failed experiments, plenty of failed results of recreation hiding in government compounds much like the innocuous skyscraper that housed SHIELD’s New York base of operations.

But they hadn’t just tried to rebuild the super-soldier serum. In the past fifty years or so, the presence of ‘metas,’ or humans with advanced powers that most humans didn’t have, had grown exponentially. Metas were difficult for police to handle specifically because most metas actively disliked the government and sought to disassociate themselves from it because of prejudice and discrimination apparent at all levels of the government. Steve had read, frowning, about the First Conflict (First because there had been _three_ conflicts so far between the metas and the normals) and how, in 1968, a riot in San Francisco had led to hate crimes, purging, and displacement of two percent of San Francisco’s population – the part of the population that had been meta. Other major cities soon displayed the same pattern, until the government had stepped in with the military and enforced the first of several ‘reforms’ aimed at forcing all metas to register. With registration came a government stipend and home in a ‘safe district’ for all metas.

It got no better in the Second Conflict or the Third Conflict.

In fact, the Third Conflict had happened a bare fifteen years ago, in the year 2017, when a meta girl had been found raped and mutilated in the alley in a non-meta sanctioned area. The metas claimed she had been kidnapped and taken there; the normals claimed that she had gone there for a nefarious reason and been stopped by overly exuberant youths.

It sickened Steve, to see what America had become.

Not, of course, that it was any better anywhere else around the world. There were comprehensive European databases cataloguing any meta within any part of the European Union, and metas were required by law to have their registration papers on them at all times. If they did not have those papers on them, they were imprisoned. The lucky ones got it sorted out; the unlucky ones never were freed. All around the world, the marginal population of super-powered humans was growing. Not quickly, not drastically, but metas were having kids, while the fertility rate of normals was declining or remaining stagnant. Governments were looking for better ‘solutions’ to the meta problem.

It had led to Steve seeking out the SHIELD gym, going over and over the problem in his head. He didn’t know where he fit in. He felt extremely displaced (the psychiatrists were having a field day with that one) and adrift. Reading about – about the decay of the American morals he had firmly believed in, in 1943 when he’d signed up, it was… sobering. Disheartening.

He didn’t know where his place was in this new society, and he didn’t know if he wanted to find it in any case.

At least his ninety year nap hadn’t dulled his reflexes any. He was still as sharp and as powerful as he had been before he’d gone under the ice. That was comforting, at least. If he needed to defend himself, he’d be able to. Plus, physical exertion did wonders to exhaust him to the point of allowing him to sleep. Not sleep dreamlessly, but sleep all the same.

“Thought I’d find you here, Captain!”

Steve paused, fist pulled back, ready to throw at the punching bag in front of him. Perhaps he should be more grateful, since it was SHIELD and Osborn who had dug him out of the ice, but he couldn’t help being mildly contemptuous for the businessman who ran SHIELD and looked at everything from a cost-benefit point of view. He also couldn’t help resenting the people who forced him awake so that he had to face the reality that everyone he had ever known had grown old and died while he remained intact within the ice. “I’m always here, sir,” he responded, voice even, and he threw a punch at the bag that made it rock dangerously. His knuckles didn’t feel a thing; they had gone numb hours ago.

“Not much to do, hmm? I know the psych ward is all up in arms against you taking missions, but perhaps it would keep your mind off of things.”

Steve bit his lip. “With all due respect, sir, SHIELD appears to be a covert ops division and I am not someone trained for that. Besides, I’m still catching up on the history of the past century.”

“Are you now?” Osborn asked, and Steve went back to punching the bag, hoping the sound would drown out Osborn’s lazy drawl. “Have you reached the First Conflict, then?”

“Yessir,” he responded quietly.

After a moment with only the heavy thud of fists against reinforced leather and sand breaking the silence, Osborn pushed, “Have you covered all the Conflicts?”

“Yes, Colonel Osborn. All of them.” He didn’t know why he was keeping his voice short and clipped; obviously Osborn wanted to bring it up and just making it clear he didn’t want to discuss it wouldn’t help him at all.

“Good, good!” Osborn grinned widely, moving his body so that Steve had no choice but to see him. “Then you know the roots of the current-day tensions between metas and normals?”

“I do,” Steve sighed, gripping the bag and giving Colonel Osborn his full attention.

Osborn clucked like a disappointed parent. “I gather you disagree with the historical events?”

“It’d be futile to disagree with fact, sir – I simply disagree with the validity of the motivations behind the Registration and Assimilation project.” Steve debated unwrapping his hands. On the one hand, it would give him something to do, since he really didn’t want to talk about this topic. On the other hand, talking about this topic would only increase his anger and make him desire to keep punching the bag once Osborn left.

“Look, whether or not you agree with the administration, we need to build a task force that can handle problems that arise with metas. At the moment, the police force is hopelessly outclassed and often resorts to needless killing. With a task force designed to subdue rouge metas, we can try and cut down on some of the hostility.” Osborn spread his hands expansively. “Certainly, you need something to do, and I need someone I can trust to bring authority and dignity. Too much bad blood on both sides means I can’t just pull up anybody. I need a symbol that the public will trust, and that the metas can respect.”

“You want a dancing monkey.”

Osborn paused, confused, but Steve had already turned his back and moved over to the bench where his cloth bag held his change of clothes and his shower items. Osborn didn’t need _Steve_ , he needed someone to prop up in front of the media to legitimize SHIELD’s efforts. Given that Steve hadn’t found much at all about SHIELD, he couldn’t tell whether he agreed with their efforts or not – but he’d had his fill of being a stunt around which the population could rally.

“Steve – no one said that it was going to be easy,” Osborn said, clapping a hand on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve fought not to knock the hand away. “No one even said it would be particularly difficult. But the fact of the matter is we’re heading towards a fourth conflict unless something can ease the tension and give the public faith that we’re working to contain the problem, and give the meta population something to prove that we’re willing to work with them.”

“As a question, sir,” Steve said, voice clipped, “ – am I a ‘normal’ or a meta?”

The moment of hesitation was all Steve needed. Nodding once, he began unwrapping his hands. “I don’t have much use for a group that will castigate me for something I did to protect my country.”

“You’re – well, I’m not going to lie, son, normals are suspicious of anyone that has an unfair advantage. But there’s a, a kinda grey area with some of the metas. After all, the US government has sanctioned multiple programs to take metas and utilize them in a militaristic aspect in order to protect the country’s interests. As long as those metas openly cooperate with the authority and not use their powers indiscriminately against the population, they have some more leeway than the separatists or the purists.” Osborn patted Steve’s shoulder and then put his hands in his pockets. “I have a team made up of two humans, to satisfy the normals, and one meta who became the way he is because of the government. I would like you to head this team, and work internationally to rebuild normal-meta relationships. Officially, you can only work in and for countries that have allowed SHIELD bases within the borders, but unofficially, you’d be sanctioned to deal with meta threats once a sufficient threshold of danger to the public has been reached.”

Steve let out a sharp sigh and decided to be as blunt as possible. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think this is a good idea, I don’t know if this is something that should be done, and perhaps the ‘meta-normal relationship’ wouldn’t be so strained if metas were treated as human beings instead of weapons or animals to collar and control.”

“Son, it’s unfair, I know, but we have to work within the system to fix it. Treating metas as human needs to come from within SHIELD. How else can we change public perception? And I wouldn’t be asking you to track and hunt down unregistered or unassimilated metas – merely deal with the meta-human threats that crop up daily, now.”

Osborn was getting close to the end of his temper; those words had come out sharp, and the tone disapproving. Steve tried to frame his next question diplomatically. “Why are you just putting together a group now? Why not before?”

“Because we’ve finally got a supercomputer that can access virtually all electronic data feeds and so can give us real-time updates of threats around the globe,” Osborn replied, and at least he didn’t take offense at the question. In fact, he seemed smugly proud of it – then again, so many people in this time seemed to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in having the most current technology at their fingertips.

Though Steve was mildly curious about this supercomputer, and what it could actually do and why it meant this team could now form, it wasn’t the point of this discussion. “Sir, I don’t know if I can throw my name behind something I’m not certain with. The media can always smell uncertainty, I’ve found.”

At that, Osborn grinned that snake-charmer grin and threw an arm around Steve’s shoulders, walking him back towards the showers. “Why, Captain Rogers, that’s the best part. You don’t need to be certain. Hell, we aren’t giving you a script or asking you to toe the party line. You can say whatever you want in front of the cameras, as long as you acknowledge that SHIELD is the one giving you funding and this team, and help deal with the problems that crop up.”

Steve frowned at the ground, trying not to look up at Osborn and show the colonel just how much he wasn’t sure about this.

But… if he didn’t have to pretend, if he could speak up and tell people how _wrong_ their behavior was, and if he was only going after other metas that were a danger to the public…

“I’ll consider it, sir. And I’ll reserve the right to quit at any time.”

“Of course, of course! Consider it; take a week, hmm? In fact, I’ll convene a meeting with the other members of your team after the week is over, so you can meet those you’d have to work with. There are some other options, if you’re not satisfied or you want someone else on your team.”

Steve paused outside the showering area, considering. “Can you give me their files, the ones you chose and the options? I’d like to look them over before meeting them.”

“I’ll have my best agent bring them over to you this evening! She’ll probably be your liaison with SHIELD, unless, of course, you’d rather work with someone else.”

Steve smiled crookedly. “Well, I’ll meet her and we’ll see.”

 

* * *

 

That evening, Steve was cooking noodles for simple spaghetti when there was a polite knock on the door. Setting the stove to low, Steve walked over to the front door and opened it to see a short, unassuming, bland man, boasting a warm, almost excited smile. “Captain Rogers?” the man asked, putting out a hand.

With a small smile, Steve shook it. “Yes, I am. You are?”

“Coulson. Agent Phil Coulson. May I just say it’s an honor to meet you, sir. Officially. I mean, I sort of met you – I watched you, while you were sleeping.”

There was a moment where Steve just stared in shock at the man on his doorstep.

“I mean – I was, I was _present_ while you were – unconscious.”

Steve bit his lip to keep from saying ‘ _That sounds much worse than your first statement_ ,’ and wondered what had happened to the female liaison.

“From the – from the ice – you know, it’s just a – just a huge honor to have you on board.”

Obviously, Coulson was trying to salvage the conversation, and Steve’s smile became a bit strained – he hated the hero-worship he saw in these people’s eyes, hated how he saw that he had become a national icon while the team he had had, Bucky and the Howling Commandos and Peggy and the colonel, had been ignored and forgotten – but he gamely kept his smile in place. “Well, thank you. Why don’t you come inside, Agent Coulson – I’m cooking spaghetti, and you’re welcome to have some. Are you the man they sent to be the liaison of this team? I see you have the files.”

Ushering this man into the reason for why he was here in the first place at least took away some of the awkward tension, as the man – Coulson – visibly turned his attention to the files. “Yes, Captain Rogers, they’re all here. I’m not technically the man they sent to be the liaison, but I’d like to be, if you’d choose me, sir.”

“Who was supposed to be the liaison?” Steve asked, motioning for Coulson to take a seat. “Also, if you don’t mind, just Rogers, or better yet, Steve, would be fine.”

“Of course, Captain – ah, Rogers, of course.” The man awkwardly took a seat, and cleared his throat as he set the stack of slim files down on the table. “Ah – your liaison was supposed to be Hill, Agent Maria Hill. You can request her, of course.”

Coulson looked like a kicked puppy when he said that, and Steve mentally cursed his inability to resist strays. “Well, we’ll see. I haven’t even agreed to this, yet.”

Something flashed in Coulson’s eyes, too fast for Steve to get a handle on. “Really? Well, may I make some suggestions as to who should be on your team?”

Steve eyed him suspiciously. Everything in this new world was talk and double-talk, blinds and bluffs, and he knew half of what Osborn was saying was aimed at getting Steve’s agreement and had no real basis in fact. Everyone, it seemed, had an agenda, and what with Steve’s notoriety as an American icon, everyone wanted Captain America on their side. “Why? What’s wrong with the ones Osborn picked?”

Coulson smiled warmly. “Nothing, Cap – ah, Rogers. Nothing at all. But you need some creative thinkers and someone flashy, I would think? Someone who understands the situation and someone who gets where you’re coming from.”

“Look, Agent—”

“Coulson,” Coulson corrected him.

Inclining his head, Steve repeated, “Look, Coulson, I get that everyone has such great ideas for this team, but I think it’s kind of suspicious that it isn’t until _I_ appear that everyone wants to put the team together.” He shook his head, carefully spreading the thick tomato sauce on top of the noodles, and put a plate down to the side of the files Coulson had in front of him and put the other plate in the chair next to it before digging in the drawer for forks. When he turned around, Coulson was looking at him as if Steve was the answer to his prayers.

“What?” he snapped, frustrated beyond the point of being polite.

Blanking his face and putting on a professional air, Coulson shuffled some of the files and then lined them neatly up against the edge of the table before pulling the plate closer. “I think you have excellent instincts, Rogers,” Coulson said softly, a small, private smile on his face. “I also think you could stand to meet with a few people – a bit off the books, if you don’t mind my saying so. But when it comes to this team – the… supercomputer necessary to assess and prioritize meta attacks has only just started working. There were some initial problems with… it.” Clearing his throat, he wound his fork in the noodles and continued even quieter, “But I think you could do something really great with this team, if you would put your mind to it.”

“And march to your tune?” Steve asked pointedly.

“Merely listen to what I have to say,” Coulson said, and then he shook his head. “No, actually, listen to what my superior has to say. I just think you’d be a great fit. And may I say, sir, that you are every bit as heroic in person as you are in the comics?”

They had made _comics_ out of his life?

Steve frowned sourly at his plate and ate single-mindedly.

Coulson let him eat in silence before clearing his throat. Steve looked up to see him pushing the files forward.

“I’ve put my top four choices for your team at the top – three agents and one superhuman. There are three other agents to choose from, and five other superhumans, if you don’t agree with my choices. My email is on that sticky note, there. Just email me your choices before oh-nine hundred, and I can get you a meeting with your choices tomorrow for lunch.” Standing up, Coulson inclined his head at Steve. “Thank you for the delicious meal, Rogers. It was an honor.”

“Thank you for coming by,” Steve responded automatically, and Coulson smiled once more before turning to leave.

“Coulson?” Steve asked.

Coulson paused in the narrow hallway to the door and looked back at Steve curiously.

“The – the metas, you called them superhuman.”

The smile on Coulson’s face widened, even as he said mildly, “Meta was a term brought into use to separate the humans from the nonhumans. Except, of course, those with powers were never _not_ humans, just something – more. Like yourself.”

With that, Coulson turned back around and exited the apartment.

 

* * *

 

The top four files were of two women and two men; the only meta – _superhuman_ – was a man, Bruce Banner, who had been funded by the government to replicate the soldier serum because of his innovate ideas of what the ‘vita-ray’ process Howard Stark and Dr. Erskine actually consisted of.  He hadn’t quite succeeded, but the army had harassed him quite a bit. SHIELD apparently came in and promised to make the army disappear if Banner came and worked for them. Whether he had come willingly or because of the coercion wasn’t in his file, but from the little compiled here, he seemed like a well-enough man.

The other three files of the top four were of agents – Agent Natasha Romanoff, Agent Bobbi Morse, and Agent Clint Barton. Romanoff had been a Russian spy who had switched sides and worked for SHIELD, now. Morse was a highly competent sharpshooter, and Steve was viciously reminded of Bucky. Barton was also a sharpshooter, with the added peculiarity that he preferred bows to guns.

The other files held varying levels of interesting agents – there was Agent Sharon Carter (grand-niece to Peggy Carter, and Steve had stared at her picture for a very long time before carefully putting her file the furthest away), Agent Jason Sitwell, and Agent Jonathon Carpe. Of the superhumans, there was a lot more variation and troubling information. There was Emil Blonsky, who had been injected with a refined formula than the one Banner had used, and had turned into a similar, less-bestial, monster. There was Eddie Brock, who apparently had been given by the government a symbiote that gave him a boost in strength and speed and stamina, while allowing him to manipulate the second skin in order to build razor-sharp claws, tentacles, and even a huge, gaping maw filled with fangs. There was Melina Vostokovna, who wore a robot suit and was a Russian assassin and spy before SHIELD gave her the option of imprisonment or working for them. There was Whitney Frost, who had been given a modified injection of the super-soldier serum, which did not have a large effect in the least but had disfigured her face. And there was Jessica Drew, who had been a sleeper agent for Hydra, which apparently was now solely a superhuman group, and had been genetically modified to exhibit certain spider characteristics, scaled to human form.

In the end, Steve decided to try out Agent Romanoff, Agent Barton, and Banner from the four files recommended by Coulson. He had back-up choices, of course – he didn’t want to force them onto the team, after all, and just because they looked good on paper didn’t mean they would automatically work well with one another.

He emailed Coulson his choices and went to bed.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, he spent more time in the gym before heading up in the levels of SHIELD’s headquarters for this lunch Coulson had put together. It was supposed to take place at one-thirty, in conference room 12-C, so her got there a little early and made himself comfortable. There were stacked sandwich boxes on a side table, and this high up, Steve could look out on downtown NYC and watch lunch hour traffic, both car and foot.

He missed his motorbike, sometimes. He’d like to travel, get a feel for this new America.

“You here for the meeting?”

Steve turned around at the male voice, and took in Clint Barton for the first time. A bit on the short side, but compact, body language clearly not intimidated and coolly confident. A predator, Steve could tell right off the bet. Also someone with a chip on their shoulder. “Yeah,” he said, gesturing to the boxes. “Pick one and take a seat.”

As Barton moved forward, movement out of the corner of Steve’s eye made him twitch to the side to see a slim, petite young woman with dark red hair cropped close to her head perusing the options. Natasha Romanoff, who looked incredibly delicate and there was _nothing_ in her demeanor to suggest the well-oiled machine that had been portrayed in her file.

Steve resolved to watch her more carefully.

As the two of them sat down at the round table, chatting quietly with one another, Steve looked at his watch and eyed the table. His metabolism was much higher than a normal person’s, which meant he was starving, but it seemed polite to let the others choose first, and they were still waiting for Banner, in any case.

“So, you’re putting together some kind of team?”

Steve turned to look at Barton, nodding as he did so. “Yeah, supposed to help mitigate superhuman threats.”

“You met with Coulson last night,” Romanoff said, voice low and husky, without even a trace of Russia. Steve absently wondered how long she’d been in the country as he nodded again.

“Yeah, he’s the one that gave me your files, suggested you two and another person as part of the team. We’re just supposed to be mitigating superhuman threats and dancing for the press, but I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I just wanted to get a feel for you, and what you think this team will be, versus what it should be and what it needs to be.”

Romanoff propped her chin up on the palm of her hand. “Did Coulson ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?”

Across the table from her, Barton began to cough and choke on his sandwich, but Steve didn’t notice; he was blushing beet red. “There are trading cards?” he asked, voice strangled.

Her eyes danced as she said solemnly, with an otherwise straight face. “Oh yes. They’re vintage; he’s been very dedicated in collecting them.”

“ _You’re_ Captain America?” Barton demanded. “Well, hell. That explains the tone of the email, at least.”

“You knew about him before the email, Clint,” Romanoff said disdainfully.

Barton glowered at her. “Yeah, but who would really put the two of us on a team with Captain America?”

“You were Coulson’s recommendations, along with another woman and man. But Colonel Osborn told me it would be a four-person team, including me, so I only chose three of you.” Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “Coulson really has cards of me?”

Barton laughed, recovered from his bout of choking. “Yeah, you’re his hero, you know. Damn, but you clean up for ninety years under ice.”

The door opened, and Coulson walked in followed by a medium-sized man, rumpled plaid shirt and scruffy beard lending an aura of disheveled genius, aided by the thin glasses that perched on the bridge of the man’s nose.

“And you must be Dr. Banner,” Steve said, gesturing to the new man.

The man – Banner – smiled faintly. “And you’re Captain Steve Rogers. Glad to see you when you weren’t frozen and blue. Your uniform and shield are in the labs, you know.”

Steve had thought his shield had been lost – he flinched and made a pointed effort to put the idea of it aside. “Well – I would like them back. But you’re here today because Colonel Osborn wanted me to put together a team to deal with superhuman threats, and while I really would rather not, he made some points that I can’t ignore. So I’d like to know what you think about such a team, and _being_ on such a team.”

“Are you sure I should even be here?” Banner asked immediately. “When you talk about meta threats, I kinda expect that I’m one of them. There are other survivors from the recreated serum that have more control over their other forms than myself.”

“Coulson recommended you, and he struck me as a guy who knows his agents,” Steve replied. “Besides that, we won’t always need a heavy hitter; sometimes we’ll just need a diplomat or a scientist.”

Banner stared at him a moment before swallowing hard and looking down at his sandwich.

“Coulson has asked to be the liaison, and I have no objections to him. But to be quite frank, I’ve only been walking around for a couple of weeks, and there’s a very limited amount to what I can learn within that amount of time. I don’t know everything about this era, and so I don’t know how such a team will be received.”

Romanoff drummed her fingers on the table a moment before saying, “Well, I have a good idea of what Osborn wants the team to be. I wouldn’t want to be on that kind of team. But you’re Captain America, so that might change things.”

“I’m in if you’re in,” Barton mumbled. “Anything to get out from working in the West.”

“You realize we’re not meant to do anything but bring in metas that the government wants to experiment on or coerce into working for them, or putting down metas that attacked the normal people?” Banner asked, looking around at each one of them. “This is – this team is nothing more than a token effort to pretend that SHIELD is actively trying to better human-meta relations. It will be a ceremonial position at best. And, no offense Captain, but they just want a big name as the figurehead so that everyone will fall in line. Nothing will change.”

“I figured as much,” Steve said heavily. “I’ve had my share of being nothing more than a publicity stunt to rally up money for a war overseas. A needful war, but a war all the same. I don’t want to be that again, if I can help it. I certainly don’t want to be nothing more than a figurehead, or SHIELD’s bullyboy. I want to try and make a difference.”

The door opened and closed, revealing a tall, strongly muscled older African American gentleman, missing one eye, with a long coat hanging down to his knees. “Well, well, well, son, that’s exactly what I was hoping to hear.”

Banner frowned, even as Barton and Romanoff leaned forwards like hounds on a scent. Coulson just looked smug.

Steve glanced at the four others in the room before meeting the newcomer’s gaze. “Who are you, if you don’t mind me asking, sir?”

“Don’t mind at all; Coulson, bring up the screen. I, Captain Steve Rogers, am Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Fury, and I’ve come to talk to you about building a strike team meant to mend human and superhuman relations.” The man – Fury – nodded at Coulson as Coulson dimmed the lights in the room and one wall turned into a giant computer screen. “Coulson here tells me that you were suspicious when they offered you this team right off the bat. That they threw it together now, and not, say, back when the Second Conflict happened and it was obvious that something was needed to bring the two communities together. That’s intelligent thinking, son, and it means there’s hope for you, yet.”

If there was one thing Steve disliked, it was being talked down to. “What do you mean, ‘hope for me yet’? You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you agreed to take on this team, to be Osborn’s trick pony. I was trying to find out a way to work around you, but Coulson told me you’d see things our way. I trusted him, because Coulson’s a damn good agent, and he’s not in Osborn’s shit books like I am, so he has access to more of the gossip than I do.”

Barton frowned. “I thought they tried to build a team, back after the Second Conflict. Or, at least, the UN tried to.”

“They did, and it failed because it was sabotaged from the inside, but we won’t get into that. We’ll start, Rogers, with a little history lesson. See, when the idea of Registration first popped up, it was for mutants only, not all superhumans – because superhumans is a huge label, and talks about everything now, from science accidents to people with developed abilities to gods. The United States of America started making noises about forcing all mutants to register, and the only mutant school in America, Xavier’s School for the Gifted, sent a few representatives to speak in front of the Senate and House.

“While they were there, a mutant assassinated the Vice President and nearly got the President.”

Steve stared in shock, even as Coulson fiddled with the controls on a computer console on the far side of the room and the screen went from a soft blue to the opening screen saver. Fury continued, “Suddenly, everyone and their mother was clamoring for Registration. Assimilation came later, and that was a mess and a half. At the time, Osborn’s predecessor, Colonel Victor Howlett, was about to step down – and _I_ was supposed to take his place. I had an idea to build a team to protect American citizens from rouge superhumans, make this team as diverse as possible. You’re looking at three members who I initially wanted to be on it, actually. In any case, one of the people I had proposed to the Council that oversees SHIELD was a god – Thor. A week before my proposal was to be voted on, Thor apparently went mad and killed Howlett. My proposal was scrapped as superhumans became metas and too dangerous to negotiate with, and Osborn – who headed the R &D boys – came out with these flying robots called Sentinels. Would police the public, he said – protect the citizens. Made from good ol’ fashioned American hands and normal human ingenuity. Nothing threatening about them.

“Except Sentinels kill. Often. And they’re hunting down teenagers, kids who are just coming into powers.”

“That’s horrible! Why did no one try to stop them?” Steve demanded, unable to keep silent any longer.

Fury sighed. “The public were in hysteria. The politicians weren’t much better. No one wanted to invest in training agents – human agents, who had no special skills at all – to go after superhumans when there were robots to do it, and robots are easy to build. Building the robots creates jobs, eases unemployment. There were a lot of factors—”

“I’m sorry, sir, but that doesn’t make it any more right.”

For a moment, Nick Fury just stared at Steve a long moment before huffing out a laugh. “You’re right, of course. These are excuses. Still, it was work from the inside to change it or be kicked to the curb with no power to do anything at all. I worked on getting backers for my plans, worked on building a position of power. If I can prove Osborn’s been doing something shady, then SHIELD is handed over to me and I can start to fix this mess.”

“And how do you intend to do that, sir?”

“Around the time of the Third Conflict, a young man, inheritor of Stark Enterprises, went into the Middle East to show off his new weapons to the army, weapons designed to kill metas. He was kidnapped – we suspect. We didn’t know. The only thing to hint that he hadn’t died was that his body wasn’t with his convoy’s bodies. It would have been written off, except for this.”

A picture flashed up on the screen, of a young man with wires from the ceiling inserted in his head. In his chest sat a glowing blue circle of light, and his eyes flashed with that unnatural blue color. He was shirtless, hands bound behind his body, and around him stood scientists, watching as another scientist stood at the man’s side and apparently showed off the contraption that was literally plugged into this man’s head. Steve stared at the screen in shock.

The man looked amazingly familiar.

* * *

* * *

“This is Tony Stark, descendant of Howard Stark, and the man thought to have been killed with his convoy. We – and by we, I mean Coulson and I – received this picture from an encrypted source a week after you were found. And do you know how we found you?”

Steve tore his eyes away from the screen to look at Fury. “I – ah – that is, Osborn told me that some explorers stumbled upon the wreck of the plane.”

“Those explorers had received a distress call from your area from an encrypted source. That’s how they found you.”

Steve paused, putting the pictures together rapidly. “This man – you think he was the one who told people how to find me? And who sent you this picture?”

“I think Osborn has been picking Tony Stark’s brain for robotic ideas, and has found a way to force Stark to do what he wants. You can’t tell, but the coordinates up there are for Belarus – Minsk, Belarus, to be precise. There is a known SHIELD compound there, and if Stark had been found in the Middle East again by SHIELD agents, that is the closest compound that has a full infirmary and interrogation rooms.” Fury looked at the picture and then looked at Steve. “Son, you’ve already expressed dislike for the way things are. You want to make a difference. I think Osborn’s piggy-backing off of Stark to rise to the top, and I think Stark’s trying to signal for our help. So I have to ask, son – do you think you can trust these people, and myself, to help you make a difference in the world? I’m not going to lie – there will be compromises. Not everything can be as rosy as you may want it to be. But I can promise to build that superhuman team and give you autonomy. I can promise to permanently assign Romanoff, Barton, and Banner to you. I can promise to give you the necessary funds to get yourselves up on your feet. And I can get you into this compound. You bring me back proof that Osborn’s been keeping an American citizen locked up, I take Osborn’s place, and we start trying to make the world better.”

Steve looked around the table at all of them – at Banner, who looked intrigued and hopeful, Barton and Romanoff, who both seemed eager to begin, Coulson, who looked so hopeful that it was almost as if stars were shining in his eyes… and Fury. Fury who was hard-eyed and uncompromising. Fury who was military the same way Osborn was, and who never did anything for any reason except to further his own agenda.

Fury, who didn’t run shivers up Steve’s spine the way Osborn had.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Osborn,” Steve finally said. “I reserve the right to walk away at any point.”

The smiles around him near-blinded him to Fury’s look of relief and gratefulness. “Fair enough, son,” Fury said roughly. “Fair enough.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry again for the delay in this second half!

Of course, the interesting thing about ‘staging a revolution’ is that no one ever tells you how much half of it is just _waiting_. Fury had left the room, leaving just him with his new teammates and Coulson, and Coulson had explained how important it was to _not let Osborn know Fury had been here_. Apparently Osborn was more than aware that Fury was angling to knock him out and anything suspicious that Fury did would get Fury sent off to various far-reaching SHIELD compounds for half a year or more.

Beyond that, it wasn’t like they could – what, storm into the hangar and steal a jet and head over to Minsk, Belarus? That would alert Osborn more surely than their secretive meeting had – and their secretive meeting _had_ been noticed, even if Osborn didn’t know the cause behind it or who had been present.

No, what was needed now was tactics, and careful planning. From what Steve could gather, Fury’s hands were tied; he had come in merely to say that, if they could find the proof on Osborn that he had kept an American citizen locked up overseas, Fury could take care of the rest. Coulson couldn’t do much, either. Apparently Osborn was none too happy that Coulson had volunteered to be the liaison, and that Hill had _let_ him be the liaison. Banner was sidelined because of the many superhumans SHIELD had under their control, he was the most volatile and most underestimated because of his deep desire to exert iron-like control over his other half. Romanoff and Barton were both regarded with suspicion by Osborn and so couldn’t do much.

Which left most of it up to Steve. Steve needed to find a credible reason to get them into Minsk, needed to find a reason to search for Stark somehow, and then needed to deal with the fallout of losing the Sentinel program and many of Osborn’s personal staff.

Thankfully, Steve had just the idea. It might take them a while, but it would give Coulson time to prepare the infrastructure to support SHIELD’s change of heart and Fury time to assess what would need to be immediately fixed. If there was one thing Steve had been absolutely firm on, it was that superhumans were to be treated as humans now, and while there wasn’t much a single person could do to change public perception, Steve was willing to bring out the old costume and the dancing girls and make a go of it. Not that he’d been asked to, but he’d implied that he was willing to go to pretty much any length to try and fight the tide of public perception.

Bucky would call him naïve.

Well, Steve considered, as he sat in his apartment and stared at the television, at the mindless entertainment and news anchors that covered horrors within minutes to move on to the fluff piece of the day, let Bucky call him naïve. Let the world call him naïve. Someone needed to change the status quo, and if Steve couldn’t, he could at least start the ball rolling. There had been a time, after all, before Steve had awoken, that all this would have been as inconceivable to the average citizen as it was to Steve himself. This had been a series of sharp, quick changes as SHIELD tried to respond to the threat of otherworldly powers. And, yes, there was power grabbing there, there was profiteering off of it, most likely. Steve wasn’t an idiot. He knew wars and campaigns like these all boiled down to money, somehow.

He just liked to think that people could rise above that, when the push came.

 

* * *

 

“You wanted to talk to me, Captain Rogers?”

“Yes, Colonel Osborn, thank you for making space in your schedule for me.” _Being polite never hurt._ “I wanted to discuss some preliminary preparations for the team that I have put together.”

“I still think you’d be better off with Blonsky, at least. More stable than Banner.”

 _Careful, don’t be too pointed, give a simple reason for the choice._ “True, sir, but Banner is more willing to listen to me if I promise him he gets to study me. Blonsky isn’t a scientist, and I can’t use that to reprimand him.”

Osborn’s eyes narrowed, but he seemed to accept it easily enough. _Good,_ he thought, closing the door behind him. But there wasn’t much more he could say – Osborn needed to ask the next question.

Thankfully, Osborn obliged. “What preparations were you thinking about, Captain Rogers?”

 _Sit down; be at ease around him. Eyes wide, easy – face open, accepting._ “If we’re going to ease tensions, we need to increase awareness and understanding. Right now, normals fear us. We need to change that. Especially when we’re talking about SHIELD agents, since your troops are not only expected to rehabilitate the metas that are captured alive but supposed to convince registered metas to become a part of SHIELD.”

“You want, what, sensitivity training?”

Steve paused in his mental monologue to keep things calm. He’d never heard of sensitivity training before, but it didn’t sound suspicious. “I think so, yes,” he finally said, leaning forward in his chair. _Be eager, but not too eager; you have the man-out-of-time-ignorance going for you right now_. “If what you mean is training to teach your agents about respecting and working with people other than themselves, then that’s what I mean. I think SHIELD agents could benefit from this and it would be a good first step to show that your men and women are willing to work with metas.”

For a long moment, Osborn did nothing but study Steve closely, tapping his fingers against the wood of his desk. Steve kept his face calm. _You just need him to say yes. You just need him to say yes and to grant you use of a jet, and that’s it. There’s nothing wrong with your request that he can pick at._

“If I grant you this, what benefit will it have for my agents? They’re busy people, you know, and to take time away from their duties to do this seems counterintuitive.” Osborn picked up a pen and began making notations on the papers in front of him.

Steve held his temper and replied calmly, “Your agents will look more sympathetic to the public, that you’re doing everything you can to work with the metas. It will put the metas at a disadvantage, that they’re not cooperating. It also will mean a higher number of recruits for your people. And, well, not to put a too fine point upon it, but your people need to make concessions first if you really want this team to have an effect. If you were really serious about rebuilding meta and normal relations again. Besides, we can always work our schedule around the agents’ without too much trouble.”

Osborn grunted, but he didn’t make any further noise against it. After a long moment, he growled under his breath and massaged his temple. “Fine, then. Have your training. Where are you going to start?”

“Oh, I thought we might start overseas. Say, Europe? And work our way through SHIELD facilities until we’re back in the United States. That will also get us out of your hair and put us in a position that we can deal with any global threats that might crop up, give us a chance to show off what we can do.”

It took a few minutes, but then Osborn let out a sigh. “This is what you want to do?”

Steve did his best not to impersonate a fresh-faced farm-boy – _only so much you can push it, keep it simple, keep it easy, smile wide_ – and nodded eagerly. “Yessir. I think it will help.”

And that slime of a snake-smile was back on Osborn’s face again. “Well, then, if you’re certain!” he gushed, as if it had been his idea all along. “Great plan, of course; glad you came to it. We’ll get your team rounded up and start this ball rolling!”

“Thank you, sir – I think it will be a great start,” Steve replied. _Keep it easy, be excited but not too excited, just happy that you can start making a difference._

Osborn waved a negligent hand. “Go on out; let’s say, a week from today, we’ll get you and your team over in Europe. Make sure you have your liaison present, and that he gives you a thorough list of the facilities. I’ll have my secretary set up a press release, introduce you to the press, get you a few interviews while you’re still in the United States. There’ll be press at each SHIELD facility, of course. Make a huge splash, charm the press, let everyone know that SHIELD is working to neutralize the threat against their homes.”

Steve bit his tongue and smiled.

 

* * *

 

“This is ridiculously slow.”

Steve winced. If even Natasha was getting fed up with their glacial progress, there was a big problem. It didn’t help that the media practically camped out on the doorstep of all SHIELD facilities pretty much from the time Steve’s team made it into a country and hounded them for interview after interview. Clint was decidedly _not_ a good PR person, and Steve had learned to keep him in the back and deflect a lot of questions away from him if possible. Bruce wasn’t that bad – certainly he kept his cool a lot better than the rest of them most of the time – but even he was looking worn thin.

“It is,” Coulson agreed, entering their room. “But after this round of interviews, we should be heading into Belarus, next. There, you’ll get to look for Mr. Stark and see whether we’re chasing daydreams or if we have solid evidence of Osborn’s wrongdoings. In any case, it is almost over.”

“Two and a half fucking months of nothing but talking to cameras—”

“Now, to be fair, Clint,” Bruce interjected in that dry way of his, “we did talk to people other than camera-holders.”

Clint snorted and flicked another playing card at the wall to have it rebound and slide into the pattern he’d been making with the other forty-seven cards. The last four he still held in his hands. They were all waiting in their hotel room for the limo that would take them to the television studio, and from there they’d head to the airport and board their private plane.

Steve had to admit, he was getting worn about the edges as well. He’d played the good propaganda boy before, but this century’s media was vicious and relentless. He had lost his temper a few times on camera – particularly when the hosts would make off-hand remarks about the need for tighter controls on superhumans and the incompatibility of superhumans and normals.

But the agents they met with were all awed by Steve. Why, he didn’t understand, until Natasha had smirked and proceeded to show him Coulson’s (very) extensive memorabilia (and he had signed the trading cards and even a few of the posters). As Captain America, he had a lot more authority than he could have ever realized, and he planned to bank on that. In any case, it meant that when he went to these facilities and worked through how to treat metas (for one, stop _calling_ them metas; call them people, or human, or something that didn’t mean ‘other’) and how to work around superhumans. How to notice what kind of superpower a superhuman had, and how to best incapacitate said superhuman _in a nonlethal manner_. Not everyone had paid attention, of course, and quite a few thought he and his team had been wasting their time, but enough people had been engaged and solemn throughout the presentation that Steve could remain hopeful.

After all, finding this Mr. Stark would only get Osborn out of power. It wouldn’t stop people from thinking bad things about superhumans. It wouldn’t mitigate the fear. It wouldn’t make superhumans more trusting. It wouldn’t mend years of broken relations. That would have to come later, once Osborn wasn’t capitalizing off of it anymore. And for that, Steve needed to know that the agents in place to help the transition from Osborn to Fury were going to remain as respectful to superhumans as they were to normal humans. From what he’d seen, it was more than possible that they would accept the transition and help ease tensions. All the agents needed was a chance and the knowledge on how to act.

A knock on the door signaled that their ride was ready, and Steve tried not to groan as he stood up. Clint had no qualms complaining, loudly, but Natasha and Bruce both resigned themselves to the upcoming interview.

And it was every bit as horrible as all the last ones. At least they had focused on Steve, as the long-lost icon found again, but that meant he had to endure questions that asked about what it was like being in the ice, what did he last remember, what his adjustment to this century was like. The interviewer consistently cut him off when he began to discuss the problems he noticed within society today, jumped to ask him about what he ate and how it differed from before he had fallen asleep.

Bruce had been pointedly asked about his other self, about whether he could really control himself or not, about whether the government should have let him on this team in the first place with what he could do. Natasha had been asked about how she had to keep up with the rest of them, what she had to sacrifice in order to be part of the men’s world, whether she missed her ‘feminine’ side because of her place on the team.

Thankfully, the rest of the team had managed to derail all questions aimed at Clint, all of which seemed to be heading towards the line of ‘how do you keep up with metas when you use a backward weapon’ and ‘how is it being the country cousin to the rest of your team.’ Not that it mattered much, because Clint was fiercely protective of Natasha and after the third time it had been implied that Natasha was less of a woman now and how she must miss her womanhood, he had nearly gotten out of his chair – only Natasha’s firm grip on his wrist kept him tethered to the seat.

Steve had never been so glad to get into the limo and make their way to the airport.

“The jet will delay its departure a bit,” Coulson told them inside the limo, making them all groan. “It isn’t ideal, but look at it this way – it means that we can order some food and have it delivered to the hangar while the pilots run a few extra tests on the equipment.”

“What was the problem?” Natasha asked in her soft way.

Coulson lifted a shoulder. “They said there was some interference with the electrical equipment, some problems with readings and computer systems. Nothing too big, nothing to run a full-systems check, just something to make certain that the systems are calibrated correctly.”

Steve, who hated all planes anyway, let out a small shudder and smiled weakly at Coulson. “Do they have good pizza in Romania?”

“We can certainly find out, Captain,” Coulson said, a bit sympathetically.

 

* * *

 

The delay meant that, instead of arriving at five in the afternoon, they ended up in Minsk, Belarus, at six. Steve immediately took Coulson aside after the plane landed (Steve spent all the plane rides in the center of the plane with headphones on and his eyes squirmed tightly shut, listening to a deep rich voice recount “Gone With the Wind,” a popular book that had come out before the war and one he’d wanted to read if he had had the money).

“Look, I think we just want to get this over with. Not that it hasn’t been good, teaching the other agents, but this press thing is more draining than it ever was when I had to do it back in the 40s.”

Coulson nodded. “I can arrange for you to visit the facility and give you mostly free reign on the compound. I can’t keep them from assigning you guides, but I’m certain you all are adept at giving people the slip. Of course, it won’t be as easy to give _these_ people the slip; perhaps you should just let Natasha or Clint, or the both of them, handle it.”

“I want Mr. Stark out of there, Coulson,” Steve said frankly. “He directed you to find me, gave you his picture, and you saw what they did to him there. And it’s been almost three months now and no one came for him. He’s going to think we don’t care.”

“I doubt he thinks that,” Coulson murmured, but Steve could see he was convincing the other man. “Alright. If Natasha and Clint can find proof, you can bring it up to the head of the compound and force them to release Stark to your care. I’m sure finding him is adequate reason to cancel the worldwide tour of SHIELD facilities. Only you might have thought out your plan too well, with Osborn – you were right that someone needs to teach these agents how to deal correctly with superhumans. Fury will want you right back out, teaching more agents.”

Steve grimaced. “As long as we’re not show-ponies anymore—”

“Ah, no – well, let’s just say your media schedule will be greatly reduced, but you and your team will probably still need to hold at least one interview per country.” Coulson winced. “It is necessary, to let people see you and know you disapprove of what they’re doing. No interviews like the last one, though – that was just a gossip rag interviewer, not one necessary. Again, Fury and I will work to make your interviews count, so you don’t have to repeat them over and over again.”

Steve mulled it over before letting out a deep sigh. “I suppose that’s the best I can ask for. Thank you, Coulson.”

“My pleasure, Captain. Now, if you excuse me a minute, I need to make a call to the facility to let them know we’re coming in for a tour; go ahead and wait in the limo with the rest of your team.”

Inside the limo, Clint and Bruce had been talking quietly between each other, and when Steve entered the car, all pairs of eyes went to him. “What did you need to talk to Coulson about?” Clint asked, voice mildly suspicious.

Steve saw no reason to lie or hide what had happened, and so explained the situation and what they were going to do once they got to the facility. It was obvious that the chance to do something other than teach or respond to questions sat well with Clint and Natasha, but Bruce frowned.

“They want us back out doing this again?” Bruce asked.

“Yes – Coulson said that I did a bit too well, when coming up for a reason for this tour, because Fury believes it’s necessary as well.” Steve spread his hands awkwardly. “I apologize; I know we all thought this would be over the minute we get Stark into our custody and back in America.”

“But – does this mean that Fury thinks this team would – will work?” Bruce asked, confused.

Steve hesitated at that, because he wasn’t certain what Bruce was getting at, and so after a minute of looking around at his other teammates, Steve nodded. “Yeah, Fury thinks a team like this is needed, but to protect normals and to show that not all superhumans are bad. This tour will begin the idea of that, but Fury would want us to continue being a part of the team.”

“I’m not the person you want on a good PR team,” Bruce said in exasperation. “I thought I was here to knock down walls to find Stark and that was it.”

“Your mistake,” Natasha replied, sipping at her ice water.

Bruce stared at the three of them as if they were deliberately being blind, and Steve said quietly, “I chose you on this team because, unlike a lot of other superhumans in the files they gave to me, you were a scientist who understood the impact of what you did and were trying to make amends for it. Everyone else volunteered to be part of a government alteration program because they wanted power.” Then, because Steve was absolutely fair, he conceded, “Well, one of the other candidates wasn’t like that, and if Fury lets us I’d like to bring her in as well, but Osborn specifically said I was only allowed one superhuman, and I chose you, Bruce Banner. Might as well get used to it.”

Before Bruce could reply to that, Coulson opened the door and slipped in and the car began to drive off. “We’re good. Natasha, Clint, here are miniature cameras; record everything, go specifically to detention levels. Stark’s become their supercomputer, somehow, and I doubt they’d give that up easily, so once you find Stark _do not engage_. Just come up and find Steve; let him barrel through the red tape and snatch Stark out.”

 

* * *

 

It was extremely anticlimactic, when it came right down to getting Stark free. Steve had been itching for confrontation for a while, the interviews really ramping up his annoyance and aggression, but when it came down to it, it turned out no one really wanted to go against Captain America. Everyone was either too cowed or too awed or too scared for their own skin to obstruct Steve’s way when Natasha and Clint came up with pictures of the young man, restrained to a chair with various wires now not only plugged into his head, but also his spine and arms and legs, and he demanded to be taken to Stark.

He didn’t quite understand the technobabble the doctors and scientists spouted at him as he demanded they unplug Stark, but Bruce was there, slipping between him and the doctors, speaking calmly and directing them to begin disengaging Stark from his bonds and wires.

“They can’t just unplug him, Steve; they’ve spent years making him reliant on technology for everything in order to keep him compliant with what they did, and years making complicated fail-safes to keep him from unplugging himself or terminating his brain. It will take a bit to undo all that and get him safely out of there,” Bruce murmured, patting Steve’s hand, and then moving off to help remove Stark from those red and black wires that sprouted from the young man’s chest.

“What’s wrong with him?” Clint asked from Steve’s side. Now that Clint pointed it out, Steve could see it – a blankness in those eyes that glowed blue like the light in his chest, no recognition or registration of pain there, even though the doctors were now removing the wires and pulling out the long needles that had anchored them to the young man’s flesh.

Bruce hummed to himself, snapping in front of Stark’s face before sighing a little. “I think the reason that he contacted Fury and Coulson was because he couldn’t keep them from stringing him up like this. Essentially, what they did was turn him into a supercomputer that is connected to all satellite feeds, any major or minor signal, from cellphone towers to individual cellphones – he’s hearing them all. His brain’s quick enough, whether naturally or enhanced, I’m not certain, to categorize them. Those screens there – ” Bruce gestured to a wall of screens to the right of them, that Steve had noticed only peripherally, “ – are compiling all the data he’s gathering. He’s sorting what is and isn’t important, and see those little yellow dots that appear after some lines but not all? He’s sending out alerts to different SHIELD facilities around the world, alerting them to possible meta activity. And other things, though I’m not entirely certain what all that coding means.”

“If his mind’s out there,” Steve said slowly, gesturing at the wires that were still plugged in, “and he’s not aware of what we’re doing _here_ , will he be locked out of his body if we unplug everything?”

“No, it’s not quite like that. His mind isn’t physically leaving, after all. But there will be a – a mental shut-down, and a necessary reboot, if you will. Imagine, for example, your computer is frozen. Normally, computers freeze because there is a process that’s taking up all of its attention and it no longer responds to the stimuli you give it, whether a click of your mouse or a stroke of your key. So you shut it down, pull its plug, and then restart it. That’s pretty much what we’re doing here.”

Steve looked over the very thin, very weak frame of Stark. “He didn’t look this frail in the picture he sent us.”

“I imagine there wasn’t much use in exercising a computer anymore. That picture came from when they first hooked him up, when he was still healthy as he hadn’t been linked up for long. He’s had about three months of just sitting – see that wire, there? That small white one, with the short needle? They’ve been feeding him intravenously for a while now.” Bruce sounded highly distracted, so Steve resolved to keep silent until Stark was completely free of everything.

An aide appeared at his elbow, hovering nervously. “Captain America Rogers, sir, Colonel Osborn is on the phone and he would like to speak with you.”

Anger flared deep in Steve’s gut. “Tell Colonel Osborn that I’ll talk to him when I return to America, which will be very soon.”

The aide looked visibly distressed. “I do not think he would like that answer, sir Captain, sir.”

“Tell him he can talk to me when I get to America,” Steve repeated, and while he felt bad passing that duty on to a messenger, he wasn’t in the mood to speak diplomatically with Osborn. This was – this was sickening, this frail form that had, just months earlier, been hale and hearty.

Finally the aide left, and the last wire was being removed when Stark who, throughout the entirety of the removal of all wires, had remained upright and locked in position, began to slump forward. Bruce grabbed at him to try and keep him propped up, but his arm restraints were doing most of the work.

This was something that Steve could do. He stepped forward, motioning to Clint to get the restraints open, and once Stark was free, he leaned forward and scooped the man’s body up, cradling Stark to his chest.

Stark’s eyes stared upward, sightless, hands and limbs slack and chest barely rising with each breath. Steve’s heart did a funny swoop and twisted in his chest, even as he nodded at his team. “Let’s just get him straight to the jet, and head directly back to America, what do you say?”

“I think it’s the best idea you’ve had so far,” Clint said with feeling.

 

* * *

 

It took thirteen very long hours before they were back on American soil, with the added delay of making sure the jet was fueled enough to get them to America, as it had been doing short hops across Europe for some time now. Stark hadn’t stirred for those thirteen hours at all, and had simply laid still and silent and expressionless on the couch within the jet. Coulson and Natasha had spent the majority of those hours on the phone, communicating with Fury and with Osborn and with whatever authorities were going to handle the case. Clint probably was supposed to be communicating as well, but he had deliberately turned off his phone and curled up in a seat and gone to sleep.

Bruce and Steve kept an eye on Stark, Bruce getting the man to drink and trying to determine how atrophied his muscles were, and Steve obligingly rolling Stark from one side to the other so that Bruce could get a look at him. When they touched down, Steve had carried Stark from the plane behind everyone else – and it was a media circus.

The instant he had stepped out of the door of the jet, millions of flashes went off, and he had stopped, frozen, at the sea of cameras and the sheer amount of people screaming and calling out his name and Stark’s name. It took him a few minutes to get moving, and really, it had been Stark who had got him moving.

Stark, who had suddenly curled weak fingers in the material of Steve’s shirt and turned his head to bury his nose against Steve’s side.

The movement had shocked Steve, which had been what had got him moving, but it had sparked a flurry of pictures and more shouted questions that Steve steadfastly ignored. There was an ambulance waiting, with a young woman – a redhead, dressed neatly and smartly in a suit, with reddened eyes as if she had been crying – waiting by it. When Steve walked over, she had smiled weakly and said, “Stark Industries thanks you for bringing him home. We had – given up on him entirely.”

“No way you could have known, ma’am,” he replied, even as the workers wheeled a stretcher over to Steve.

“Miss,” she corrected. “Miss Potts. You can call me Pepper.”

“Pepper,” he repeated, bending over to gently place Stark on the stretcher.

Only Stark wouldn’t let go.

It would have been child’s play to break that weak grip; Stark wasn’t near strong enough to really hold Steve in place. It just felt – wrong, to Steve, to take away what little comfort Stark had reached for. So he gently wrapped his hand around long, slim fingers, and stroked a thumb over the back of Stark’s hand.

“You gotta let me go, okay? You need to go, get healed, get fixed up. I’ll see you again sometime. You’ve got a great gal here, you know?”

“I’m not his gal,” Pepper corrected, even as she leaned down and linked her fingers with Stark’s free hand. “Hey, Tony. Hey there. You are ridiculously late, you know that? You want to know how many board meetings you missed?”

That seemed like the wrong thing to say to Steve, but Stark twitched towards her voice and made a questioning grunt, fingers relaxing around Steve’s shirt. Carefully, Steve placed his hand flat on the stretcher and stepped back, to find Coulson at his elbow, tugging him towards a dark-windowed car that was apparently waiting for him.

Before he got in, though, he craned his neck around to watch the ambulance leave with Tony and Pepper inside.

 

* * *

 

The next few weeks passed by in a blur of testimony and witnessing, of explanations and decisions. When it all ended, Osborn had been removed, and the full depth of his deceit ran, as most corruption did, towards money – he and Obadiah Stane, who had taken over Stark Industries when Stark was declared dead, had profited greatly from the Sentinel project. A lot of the gadgets SHIELD had used had come from Tony Stark’s hands, while he had been imprisoned. The plan with Stark seemed ill-advised and completely random, but then again, it wasn’t Steve’s job to try and find the holes in Osborn’s testimony and alleged decisions about Stark.

Fury was acting head of SHIELD while the Council reviewed other options. The public was in shock and clamoring for a defense since all Sentinels had been recalled and summarily destroyed. Then, Stark appeared at a press conference on the lawn of his family’s mansion in New York and dropped another surprise on the business world – not only were all Sentinels gone, but Stark was shutting down the entire weapons division of Stark Industries. He was going to build a charity for superhumans specifically, and for humans whose houses were destroyed by superhumans. As a first step to reaching out to both communities, it was small, but Steve had watched the broadcast with an odd sort of pride.

Also, with some worry. Stark was still a bit too thin, a bit too jumpy. And his eyes, when his head was tilted and the camera got him just right, glowed blue.

“Rogers?”

Steve turned off the television and turned to see Fury standing in the doorway. Steve was in the rec room connected to SHIELD’s gym, freshly showered after another workout with the punching bags.

“Caught Stark’s grand gesture, I see.”

Steve wondered why he felt so defensive, and ended up shrugging his shoulders. “It’s a good start. Not enough, but a good start.”

“What would be enough?” Fury asked mildly.

Steve leaned forward, frustrated that he had to explain himself _again_. “We need unity, not these divisions that make it easier to draw the lines between _us_ and _them_. Those lines only fracture the American public, and disenfranchise a huge group of people. Forcing people to register – that’s like the precursor for concentration camps. Forcing people to assimilate was even worse, because that stripped them of who they were in order to make them ‘safe’ for the public. There are too many superhumans who feel it’s only their due to rob a bank or terrify the populace, because none of that population protected them when they needed it. We need acknowledgement of superhumans’ citizenship, and schools that are integrated with both kinds. We need special classes for superhumans to teach them to control their powers, and special classes for the police forces about how to subdue – in a nonlethal manner – superhumans who have gone rogue. We can never give the population full reassurance that nothing will ever happen, but minimizing the risk is something that we can do.”

Fury studied him a long moment, before saying mildly, “You never did finish that tour around the world. I think now’s a good time to have you out there, speaking with agents like you just did, explaining to the news crews what you just explained to me. A short tour, though,” he added quickly, when he saw Steve’s face at the news. “Not every major SHIELD facility; just the ones in countries with high superhuman populations. I’ll arrange for Natasha and Clint to also go out, as a team, hitting the SHIELD facilities you don’t. Shouldn’t take more than three months, and that should cover the world, not just one continent.”

Steve sighed. He knew this had been coming, after all; Coulson had told him. He just had been hoping for a change of heart.

Or something.

“When do we leave?” he asked.

 

* * *

 

It was nearing the last of Steve’s list of facilities – he only had two more to go, both of which were in the United States – when, walking back to his hotel in Mexico, he saw Coulson standing by his room door.

He paused, tilted his head at Coulson. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Clint and Natasha?”

“There’s been a change in plans,” Coulson said simply. “Aliens are attacking New York City.”

Steve stared at Coulson a long moment. “Aliens,” he repeated slowly.

“Are attacking New York City, yes. Believe me, they’re as surprised as you. We have three people on the scene now, but what better way to introduce the Avengers Initiative than by defending New York City?”

“The what?” Steve asked, but he was already moving to the black car Coulson had indicated. Getting in, he saw that all his stuff was present; someone (Coulson himself?) had packed up his hotel room.

“The Avengers Initiative. Fury got the Council to agree to it on a temporary basis. A back-up to police forces, if you will. Handling threats most people can’t. Aliens pretty squarely falls in that.” Coulson tapped the headrest of the driver’s seat and they were off, maneuvering through congested streets to the airport.

“I’d say,” Steve muttered.

“You’ve been doing good work,” Coulson said, suddenly. “Here, at the other facilities. Making a difference. Public perception’s never easy to change, but it’s changing. Slowly. More favorable responses on surveys, at least.”

Steve grinned wryly. “Well, I try,” he said. “Sometimes it seems really pointless.”

Coulson shrugged. “Making a difference, as I said.” The car pulled to a stop, and Coulson got out, holding the door. “I think it could be a lot worse, and part of the reason it isn’t is because you’re Captain America – but the other part of the reason it isn’t, is because you’re Steve Rogers. And while people are drawn in by the myth, they’re staying for the man.”

Steve fought not to blush, walking up the steps to the jet, only to see Clint and Natasha relaxing in seats.

He turned to look at Coulson behind him. “I thought you said we had three on the scene.”

“We do,” Clint said, at the same time that Natasha asked, “Has he fanboy’d at you yet for everything you’ve done?”

Coulson flicked her ear as he walked by, and she laughed easily, eyes dancing with amusement at Coulson’s expense. Coulson kept his head held high as he responded to Steve’s statement. “We have Banner, Thor, and Stark on the scene at the moment, and while they’re not that bad they’re certainly just barely holding the line. We need to figure out how to close off the portal they’re coming from.”

Thor, Steve had heard only a little about, and Bruce, he’d expected, but – “Stark? What’s he doing?”

“Apparently, the Sentinel armor was a rip-off of some high-tech ‘prosthetic’ he designed for himself. He’s got a battle-suit of armor that he can fly in, and has some wicked abilities. He’s been doing pretty good for himself, after his rehab and regaining his strength. You heard about that incident with Obadiah? Yeah, that was him. Seems that Obadiah was more than just working with Osborn to profit off of the Sentinels; he had arranged for Osborn to kidnap Stark so that they could effectively hobble him and keep him cranking out designs for Stark Industries to use. Obadiah’s in jail and he’s not getting out for a _long_ time,” Clint explained.

“Surely you’ve heard about ‘Iron Man’?” Natasha added, voice dry.

Steve frowned. “I have, but – he seems reckless. Or at least, Iron Man seems reckless.”

“He is. Civilians normally are. Bravado gets them through, but there’s very little control. He’s less of a liability than most civilians, because he’s got a brilliant tactical mind, and whatever the scientists did to him is semi-permanent, as he can still access computers with his mind, which helps his offensive capabilities, but.” Natasha shrugged one shoulder. “We should be there soon.”

“We need a plan,” Steve said immediately, leaning forward to start drawing one up. “If there’s a portal that we need to close, stands to reason there’s something somewhere powering the portal. Can we talk to Stark or Thor? Bruce, I assume, is unable to speak well or have a headset in.”

“You assume correctly, captain my captain,” Clint grunted. “We can get in contact with Stark.”

“Do so,” Steve said immediately, pulling up a news feed of the current battle.

“Why hello, Agent, miss me that much?”

Stark’s voice – Steve realized just then that he’d never heard Stark’s voice directly. Always prerecorded, always aimed at an audience, but he’d missed the subtle nuances of Stark’s arrogance and casualness, his eagerness and dry with and over-the-top grandstanding.

“Stark, I know you’re out there fighting aliens at the moment—” Coulson began.

“Persistent little buggers. Who actually look like bugs. Is it even an insult to call a bug a bugger?”

“—but we need to know the situation.”

“We?” There was a pause, and then a hum in the air. “Ah, it’s the last trio of our merry band of the insane. Well. The situation? Bug creatures are falling out of the sky and the Hulk is smashing them, I’m blasting them, and Thor’s just cooking them ‘til they’re just right.”

“We need to know what the portal looks like. Whether it has any obvious energy source,” Steve said quickly.

“Well of _course_ there’s an energy source, but I can’t get near it and there’s too many to ask Hulk or Thor to cover me. Though with the glimpses I got, it looks like as long as one of the cornerstones of whatever altar they built goes poof, it should at least close it off. Dunno if they’re like a hive mind, and being cut off will make them disoriented, or not, but at the moment we just really need to stop their numbers from increasing. Thor, buddy, you see that clump over there? So if we’re good, then I’m going to get back to actual fighting.”

Steve surveyed the news footage and the live feed SHIELD had, and looked at the formations whirling around while trying not to focus on a tiny red and gold humanoid shape flitting in and out, dancing like a phoenix among the ashes of its enemies. “Alright, Natasha, you and I are going to try and clear out the bugs from the ground. Make sure people get evacuated. Clint, you’re still good with an arrow, right?”

“Of course,” Clint said, insulted.

“Then if the problem is that every time Stark approaches the altar they prevent him from continuing, I want you far back and get an explosive at this thing. Blow it sky high, disrupt that portal. Coulson, can you drop Natasha and I off on the ground and then take Clint up to a vantage point?”

“Not a problem,” Coulson said easily.

“Right.” Steve stared at it a little longer and shook his head. “Aliens. Bug aliens. Falling from the sky.”

“It could be worse,” Natasha said smoothly, eyes bright with mischief. “It could be slime monsters rising out of the Hudson.”

 

* * *

 

“Iron Man!”

The red-and-gold robot suit paused on the flight deck, clearly preparing to take off. “You wanted something, Cap?”

“Look, in the debriefing… I wanted to apologize.”

The head of the robot tilted ever so slightly to one side. “For what?” the disembodied voice asked.

“For calling you Stark, for one. For losing my temper, for another. We really need you on the team, and I had no right to get angry at you when you managed to keep the bug-aliens from destroying more of New York City than they did.”

Metal fingers taped against a metal hip. “I suppose we both said things that were – not good,” was the answer, after a long moment.

“Can I talk to you without the helmet?” Steve asked on an impulse.

Again there was another long pause, and then the metal plates receded and Stark – _Tony_ – reached up and took off the helmet, shaking his head a bit. It didn’t matter – his hair was flattened and… adorable.

Steve knew he had a problem. Then again, he knew that three months ago, when he had looked at Tony’s hand curled up in his shirt and thought of his fingers as slender, and wished to feel them on his actual skin.

Clearing his throat – and blushing – he rubbed the back of his neck. “Thanks, Tony,” he said sincerely. “Thank you for your help. And I would greatly appreciate it, if you considered being a part of the Avengers Initiative.”

“Where were you the last couple of months?” Tony asked randomly.

Blinking, Steve answered hesitantly, “Doing training? Or, I mean, not _doing_ training, but training others? I’ve been – pretty much all around the world, now.”

Tony tapped an impatient finger on the helmet, and it suddenly was completely clear to Steve what the real, underlying problem was.

“I was coming back to see you, you know. I wanted to meet with you, ask how your recovery was coming along. But you look pretty good to me. Certainly very strong.”

If Steve wasn’t mistaken, that dull color high in Tony’s cheeks was a blush.

“Well, that’s what three months of solid recovery will do for you,” Tony said offhandedly, and then he turned halfway away from Steve. “See you soon?”

“How about tonight? Eight?”

“Eight?” Tony asked, turning back to face Steve.

Growing more confident, Steve nodded. “Eight. Dinner and a movie – that’s the standard nowadays, isn’t it?”

“Dinner and a—” Tony’s cheeks went a deeper red, and he cleared his throat. “Do you want me to meet you at the – place?”

“Naw, come to my apartment. We’ll eat in. Sound good?”

Tony licked his lips, and Steve couldn’t help but follow the movement before returning his eyes to Tony’s gaze. “Sounds great,” Tony finally replied, and then he was jamming the helmet on his head and jumping off of the flight deck.

“You seemed to have really startled him.”

Only being used to Natasha’s propensity to sneak up on people kept Steve from leaping out of his skin. As it was, he just startled violently and whipped around. “Jesus, Natasha.”

“You realize, he’s been doing pretty good. He’s not great by any sense of the word, but he’s doing better. And mentally, he’s still stuck at twenty-five, even though he’s about thirty-five. Ten years imprisoned will do that to a person.”

“I know, Natasha,” Steve said honestly. “I understand. And I don’t want to hurt him.”

Natasha eyed him a moment before nodding. “Well. He likes burgers. Burgers and hot dogs.”

Before she had even left, Steve was planning the meal, feeling for the first time in a long time excited about someone in a romantic sense, and nervous about inviting them to his home.

His home.

He stopped, realizing what he had thought, how he had come to accept this century and this place as his home, after all the ups and downs… and he found that he didn’t really care anymore. Oh, he was certain he’d still feel displaced, and there were certainly still problems with public perception, but he knew he could face it all with his team.

Here, in his new home.


End file.
